Monthly Archives: August 2010

Starting with the Oct. 7 season opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the brand new Consol Energy Center, the Flyers will be nationally televised on VERSUS a total of nine times during the 2010-11 season. The Penguins, Rangers, Detroit, Chicago, Washington and Boston will be shown a league-high 11 times.

Beginning in late Jan., NBC will (have the option) to carry the Flyers five times, including three games against the rival Rangers and once hosting the Los Angeles Kings. The Flyers will begin their NBC schedule with a rematch of the 2009-10 Stanley Cup Finals against the Chicago Blackhawks on Jan. 23.

All NBC games listed are soft scheduled around the league so the network can pick the best match up for that particular day.

While recovering from a blood infection that has kept him off the ice since Dec. 8, 2009, the 26- year-old former Flyer and current Anaheim Ducks forward announced on Monday that he has been diagnosed with yet another blood infection.

Lupul, a Flyer from 2007-09, missed all but two months of the 2009-10 season and is expected to miss training camp and the start of the regular season.

Although opening day of training camp is still roughly a month away, that doesn’t stop the Flyers’ front office from building the framework of the forward lines.

According to CSNPhilly.com, the Flyers are planning to start training camp with Mike Richards centering Claude Giroux and Dan Carcillo. This might come as a minor surprise considering that Giroux proved late last season that he flourishes at the center position.

However, Giroux will be replaced as a pivot by Jeff Carter, who will be between Ukrainian sniper Nikolai Zherdev and sophomore James vanRiemsdyk.

One year after predicting that Philadelphia would hoist the Cup, which despite early laughs was strangely on the mark, The Hockey News’ prediction for the 2010-11 season has the Flyers landing fourth in the Eastern Conference.

According to the THN print edition (the online edition is releasing one ranking per day), standing in the way of the Orange and Black is Boston (3rd), Pittsburgh (2nd) and Washington (1st). The rankings would have the Penguins beating the Flyers out for the Atlantic Division title and would set the Flyers up with a first-round playoff rematch against the New Jersey Devils (5th).

The rankings also have the New York Islanders and New York Rangers both missing the playoffs and hanging in lottery draft pick territory.

In the Western Conference, the Vancouver Canucks were selected by THN to win the Cup, followed by San Jose (2nd), Detroit (3rd), Chicago (4th) and Los Angeles (5th).

On July 27, Flyers defenseman Chris Pronger underwent minor surgery to clean out his damaged right knee. Following the successful procedure, Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren stated that the 35-year old would be “ready for the start of camp.”

Holmgren may have been a bit optimistic.

“No. I can tell you that much,” Pronger said, when asked by PR staff if he would be 100-percent for the start of training camp in Sept. “With the amount of atrophy, it is going to take a lot of hard work to build the leg muscles back up.

“Obviously, I will spending a lot of hours in the gym trying to strengthen my knee and the rest of my body.”

Despite the NHL’s reopened investigations into the front-loaded contracts of Philadelphia’s Chris Pronger, Boston’s Marc Savard, Chicago’s Marian Hossa and Vancouver’s Roberto Luongo, one unnamed agent believes even with the league’s newfound aggressiveness on the heels of the declined Ilya Kovalchuk deal — the NHL will not cancel the already accepted contracts.

“The NHL isn’t going to do anything with these deals. Nothing is going to happen,” the agent told the Ottawa Sun. “They’ve been trying to investigate most of these deals for a year.

“I can tell you they certainly aren’t going to rip up a contract that has already been signed and approved by the league.”

On Monday, arbitrator Richard Bloch made the ground-breaking ruling to uphold the NHL’s right to abolish Ilya Kovalchuk’s 17-year, $102 million deal with the New Jersey Devils, based on the grounds that the deal was created to circumvent the salary cap.

But as the official news spread, general managers around the league began to tremble, because this ruling didn’t just set a precedent for future deals — it could even change the past. For not only did Bloch tear apart the Kovalchuk deal, he mentioned, by name, the deals for Vancouver’s Roberto Luongo, Boston’s Marc Savard, Chicago’s Marian Hossa and Philly’s Chris Pronger, as example of infraction.

“While the contracts have, in fact, been registered, their structure has not escaped League notice: those SPCs [standard player’s contracts] are being investigated currently with at least the possibility of a subsequent withdrawal of the registration.”

About

Ryan Bright (Philabright@gmail.com) is a sports writer, born and raised in the Philadelphia area. A graduate of West Chester University, he has been with the Daily Local News in Chester County since early 2007, working as the paper's college and high school ice hockey beat writer. In 2010, began as a contributer for CSNPhilly.com, covering the Flyers and the Philadelphia Union.

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